People are ambivalent about ‘process’.
For some it feels like a way to ensure consistency, a helpful prop to support them in what they have to do.
For others, its a straitjacket, that turns people into robots.
I prefer to think of it as a springboard. Something with enough give to be able to support different people, and enough resistance to help them really take off.
As every Chelsea gardener knows, the best way to protect your garden from wind is not a solid wall or fence, but a permeable barrier like a hedge.
This filters the wind, slowing it down, letting in fresh air to circulate among your precious plants and shrubs without damaging them.
A solid barrier on the other hand lets air crash over it like a wave – and then falls at the first gale.
This is the second post inspired by an extract from ‘Leadership and The New Science’ by Margaret Wheatley, entitled “Change, Stability, and Renewal: The Paradoxes of Self-Organising Systems“
To recap: if a business has a strong frame of reference in place – its Promise of Value and its ‘way we do things round here’ – then it can be confident that any changes that occur will be consistent with that frame of reference.
This means that not only a business can afford to be open to small variations (what Holacracy calls ‘tensions’), it needs to be – especially to small, persistent variations that are driven by the people it serves – its customers.
This in turn means that it makes sense to give people full autonomy to respond to variation, because you know they will do so in line with the Promise of Value at the core of the business, so no harm will be done, and because what starts as a small variation may well turn into a new opportunity, a new product or service, a new way of doing things, that makes the business stronger and more stable over time.
Most of us like things to stay the same, we seek order and predictability. We fear that loosening control will lead to too much fluctuation and eventually chaos, so we tend to keep systems rigid and control centralised.
The paradox is that the opposite is what we need to maintain the identity and stability of our business over the long term.
Not freedom or order, but freedom and order.
Discipline makes daring possible.
Books updated per labour hour. VAT Returns filed per labour hour. Annual Accounts filed per labour hour. Client profit margin … Read More “Productivity”
At home, if I burn my hand on the handle of the grill pan on my cooker (because I’ve forgotten that when the oven is on, the grill also gets hot), I don’t have to report that to my boss, who’ll report it to her boss, along with all the other mishaps of the kitchen. I don’t have to wait for a decision from them on how best to avoid that next time.
Of course not. I’m a grown-up. I say to myself “stupid woman, of course that would be hot!”, and remind myself to use an oven-glove next time. And I do. I don’t need a notice on my grill pan handle saying “Caution – may get hot”.
If I keep burning my hands, then I need to find out why. Are my oven gloves getting lost? Am I rushing things too much? Should I buy different oven gloves that are easier to use? Should I invest in a different cooking arrangement?
Of course this is fine for me, I don’t share my kitchen with other cooks. But I think the principle is the same.
Given the responsibility and the means, the people in the kitchen are probably best placed to solve most kitchen problems.
Nobody likes reporting. It gets in the way of doing the job.
Because it feels like an extra task, it gets pushed back to the last minute, and possibly even made up. Worse, it can be very tempting to request more information in a report, because ‘they’re reporting anyway’.
On the other hand, feedback is essential if a business is to thrive and evolve.
So how best to get feedback you can rely on?
Firstly, keep it simple. What is the least you need to know whether are not things are going well?
Secondly, make collecting that information a side-effect of doing the job. The trick here is to find a step in your process that creates its own trail. A step that either gives you the data you need or can act as a proxy for it. If that’s not possible, sample instead of monitoring continuously.
Of course, reporting as we know it only happens because the person doing the job is not the person making decisions about how best to do the job.
That’s where the real problem lies, and the solution to that is responsible autonomy.
For at least the last 189 years, we’ve known that overburdening people, equipment and systems leads to mistakes, wasted effort and sometimes, tragedy. We know that people, systems and even equipment need rest. Time out to repair, recharge and recalibrate.
In the past, days off work were imposed by law – admittedly not so people could rest, but so they could observe religious holy days, but at least they were guaranteed non-working days for almost everyone.
That is no longer the case. Now that consumerism is the national religion and online shopping never stops, we are individually responsible for making sure we take rest days. And the vestiges of our national holidays make that a bit easier to achieve.
So, this is my reminder to have a break. From work, from shopping, from the day-to-day.
Enjoy the long weekend.
See you Tuesday.
I’ve written before about the need for something between bespoke and off-the-peg, and it’s something I’ve been thinking about for … Read More “Taking your own medicine”
Do you remember your first driving lesson?
I do. At the end of it I wondered how on earth I was going to be able to remember everything – never mind watch out for pedestrians and other traffic!
But after several lessons I got the hang of it, and eventually of course driving became second nature. To a point where some nights I got home from work almost without realising it.
We humans are able to make a lot of things second nature. Walking, driving, playing the cello, or rugby, or chess.
We do this by repeating certain combinations of actions until they become habit. We no longer need to think about them. That frees us up to to concentrate on the exceptions – those things outside the habitual that are going to prove interesting or dangerous.
But too much reliance on pure habit can also be dangerous. I bet you’ve had to go back to your car after half an hour of shopping because you can’t remember locking it, even though you’re sure you did.
That’s why pilots have checklists. To make a habit of the actions that must be done, and then to make sure they perform those actions consciously every time.
What’s the relevance of this for business? Well, you need to actively create this interesting tension between habit and consciousness:
Then you can happily let them play with the exceptions.
Discipline makes daring possible.
A quick trawl of the internet found me these definitions of the verb “to delegate”:
In most cases the meaning is not ‘doing your work for you’, but ‘acting on your behalf’.
In other words, the key relationship is not between you and the person you delegate to, but between you and the clients they serve as if they were you.
Not employees. Agents. Or ambassadors.
People you can trust to do the right thing.